Hello All,This is my first post here but I have been lurking for a couple of months now. First let me say, what a wealth of information! Second, this is the most cordial page I have ever encountered; no one knocks another user for anything, at least that I have seen - amazing and exemplary these days.

I have been playing with pizza for about fifteen years, more off than on, and not had very good results. A few months ago I decided, as have all of you, to go after that proper Neapolitan pizza. I knew from my time in Naples, I lived there for a few years in the 80's, that a pizza oven has to be HOT and that there is no substitute for fresh authentic ingredients, like mozzarella di buffala.

The first issue I tackled was heat. I placed my large bread stone on my gas grill and fired it up on full - the grill runs about 85,000 BTU. I added a few wood chips to the smoker box to give it some authenticity and I came out with a passable product, not great, but passable. I needed more heat on top and I needed to refine my dough recipe. I made a few more batches of dough and followed many pointers from the knowledgeable folks who post here - pizza was getting better... Then I remembered that my grill has a burner for rotisserie, duh! I never use it because it is just too hot to slow cook, so I forgot about it. I felt pretty foolish but also happy that I could get some extra direct heat from on top. The next batch of pies was pretty good; I used the paddle to spin the pie once during its 2-3 minute cooking time. The last batch of pies was pretty decent, if I do say so myself. I used Bel Aria "00" flour, fresh mozzarella de buffala, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil and a great Tuscan fennel salami. Not bad, not bad... I know some of you purists would probably say that the salami is not authentic but that's the way I like it.

I have been waiting for a few weeks for a friend, who owns an Italian shop, to get me a bag of the Caputo Pizzeria flour. I just got the bag this afternoon, boy that's a lot of flour! I divided the 55 lb. bag into five vacuum sealed bags and commenced to make some Caputo dough. The dough is on its first rise right now. I don't think I can stand the wait until tomorrow evening to try it out. BTW: Does anyone here know if vacuum sealing flour is OK? I have never seen it done commercially, I guess there must be a reason they don't do it.

I'll post more details on my recipes and techniques once I don't think I'll embarrass myself Anyone else try the stone-on-grill technique using a rotisserie to boost the heat?

i don't have a rotisserie unfortunately, but i did experience the same issue: too much heat on the bottom, not enough on the top.

i only just started tackling this issue and came up with a somewhat absurd set-up using two stones and a few fire bricks to basically build an enclosure on the grill. i actually had pretty decent results twice now. pictures (and a better description) can be found here.

btw, i've been lurking for a while now too. this is an incredible forum!

Do you have any trouble getting the pizza succesfully off the peel and onto your stone? It looks like you probably can't get a lot of angle on the peel, and it might be a bit tricky seeing where you're placing on the back of the stone.

I'm also trying to make a decent pizza on a stone on my grill, but as everyone else found, the bottom of my crust is done before the top is. I've searched this forum for the aluminum trick, but either i missed it, or didn't find it.

Jeff, cna you summarize what the solution was? Was it just to put foil below the stone to reflect some of the heat back?

I have a buddy that uses the potato/upper rack on his grill to hold a couple of red clay tiles along with his pizza stones. But he uses to much propane to get the stones up to temp. But he's happy with his results.

>Jeff, cna you summarize what the solution was? Was it just to put foil below the stone to reflect some of the heat back?

yes and if you have a large grill you may even be able to get the energy to reflect around the stone and reflect back from the top. At the least, you can insulate the dome and keep the heat in and keep some heat coming from up top. But shielding the bottom is a must.

Tommy, if you haven't seen my recipe, which has some heat tips (not necessarily for the grill, but worth a read), click the globe under my name.

This forum provides an enormous amount of information. I am glad i found it. I always enjoyed making my own pizza and I have tried all summer to duplicate the great pizzas of Napoli.For the heat distribution problem on the grill, my solution is to use 3 pizza stones on top of each other in oder to get the pizza closer to the top of the grill where there is more heat. The result was very good although it takes more time to get the top stone as hot as possible.I have also tried the aluminum foil under one pizza stone and that works very well too with less warm-up time.